Nintendo drops DS price in Japan

Similar cuts for North America are still on hold

Nintendo is lowering the prices on all its DS handheld models by 10% to 20% in Japan, effective June 19.

Similar cuts for North America are still on hold, though retailers in the U.K. will reportedly be allowed to cut prices by unspecified amounts. The aim is to reverse a sales slump and put the company back in the black.

The price on the DSi, the DS model that has been on the market since November 2008, will drop from $205 to $163.

The DS Lite, which went on sale in March 2006, will switch from a suggested retail price of $182 to open pricing. Meanwhile, the price of the bigscreen DSi LLJ, which bowed in November 2009, will fall from $217 to $195.

Sales of DS handhelds slid to 27.1 million units in the 2009 financial year, compared with 31.1 million the previous year.

The first Nintendo DS debuted at the end of 2004 and 128,890,000 units had been sold by March 31.